Poor Trump -- every day is another death of a thousand cuts. Go Mueller!!

Anti-Trump dossier author was hired to help Hillary challenge 2016 election results

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/12/christopher-steele-hillary-clinton-was-preparing-t/

British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who wrote the Democrat-financed anti-Trump dossier, said in a court case that he was hired by a Democratic law firm in preparation for Hillary Clinton challenging the results of the 2016 presidential election.

He said the law firm Perkins Coie wanted to be in a position to contest the results based on evidence he unearthed on the Trump campaign conspiring with Moscow on election interference.

His scenario is contained in a sealed Aug. 2 declaration in a defamation law suit brought by three Russian bankers in London. The trio’s American attorneys filed his answers Tuesday in a libel lawsuit in Washington against the investigative firm Fusion GPS, which handled the former British intelligence officer.

In an answer to interrogatories, Mr. Steele wrote: “Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie. It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.

“Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and HFACC Inc. (also known as ‘Hillary for America’) could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.”

The Democrats never filed a challenge, but Mr. Steele’s answer suggested that was one option inside the Clinton camp, which funded Mr. Steele’s research along with the Democratic National Committee.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Moscow interfered in the election by hacking Democratic Party computers and stealing emails that it released via WikiLeaks.

No Trump associate has been charged with collusion.

In a previous court filing in a second case in April-May 2017, Mr. Steele said his job was to find links between Trump associates and Moscow.

Hired by Fusion in June 2016, he wrote a 17-memo dossier alleging a “extensive conspiracy” between the two, which two years later hasn’t been proven publicly by special counsel Robert Mueller or Congress.

In his most recent London court filing, Mr. Steele is defending against a libel lawsuit by citing a discredited story about a computer server, Trump Tower and a Russian bank.

The suit was brought by three Russian oligarchs who control Moscow’s Alfa Bank. Mr. Steele, under the dossier heading of election interference, accused them of paying cash bribes to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The bankers — Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan — also sued Fusion GPS.

The case was dismissed by a D.C. Superior Court judge. Lawyers filed an appeal in U.S. District Court and attached Mr. Steele’s August declarations given in the London court.

“Internet traffic data suggested that a computer server of an entity in which the Claimants have an interest, Alfa Bank, had been communicating with a computer server linked to the Trump Organization,” Mr. Steele stated.

His goal was to show that his unverified dossier was correct when he wrote of an “extensive conspiracy.”

But the server story has fallen into the “fake news” category by most accounts.

When it began appearing on social media in 2016, some online sleuths looked at the server’s IP address and other data. They traced the server to a location outside Philadelphia that spewed marketing spam.

A Trump Organization official told The Washington Times last year that some of the spam went to Alfa Bank employees who perhaps stayed in Trump hotels. That’s how Alfa turned up in some emails.

The New York Times investigated and said the FBI basically came to the same conclusion.

Mr. Steele didn’t mention the server theory in the dossier itself.

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson did try to sell the idea to the Justice Department, despite The New York Times’ finding. He met with then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr.

Trying to prompt an investigation, Mr. Simpson told him the Times story was wrong and the server was used for direct communication, according to Mr. Ohr’s notes turned over to Congress.

In his court filing, Mr. Steele sought to show cronyism between Trump and the bank by noting that Alfa hired then-private attorney Brian Benczkowski to investigate the server allegation.

Mr. Benczkowski is now assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, having won Senate confirmation in a near-party line vote.

Fusion GPS, in defending against the Russians’ libel lawsuit, depicts the three men as corrupt Putin cronies.

Mr. Steele faces a second defamation suit in London, this one from Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev, owner of XBT Holdings and provider of computer servers to thousands of clients.

In his final December 2016 dossier memo, Mr. Steele accused Mr. Gubarev of actually performing the hacking on Democratic computers under duress from Russian intelligence. He said in a court filing that the allegation came from unsolicited call-ins.

Mr. Gubarev said the allegations are made up. In Florida, he also is suing BuzzFeed, the news website that published the entire dossier in January 2017.

PkrBum wrote:That's funny... you've never had any problem with hillary monetizing the state dept.

Somebody's moral compass is irretrievably broken -- make that smashed to smithereens. There is absolutely zero comparison between Hillary Clinton and the perfectly despicable, petulantly childish piece of shit in the White House, who wouldn't know truthfulness if it bit him in the balls.

Troll on - you make zero impression here because you're blind as a bat and missing your radar to boot.

Thanks, Tel.

FARRELL: HOW THE FBI RAN AN ILLEGAL COUNTERINTELLIGENCE MASQUERADE IN PLOT TO GET TRUMP

https://www.dailycaller.com/2018/12/20/fbi-counterintelligence-trump

In examining the cast of FBI and senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials fired, retired, resigned and under investigation since May 2017, the breathtaking scope of the FBI’s unprecedented criminal efforts to steer a presidential election and frame a newly elected president serves as Exhibit A for the organization’s disbandment. The “leadership” that willfully and corruptly ignored Hillary Clinton’s criminal mishandling of highly classified information had no problem faking a counterintelligence investigation to smear and destroy President Trump.

A recitation of the FBI/DOJ Litany of Shame is called for: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Baker, Ohr, Yates, Priestap, Rybicki, Kortan, Campbell, Turgal, Bower, Steinbach, Giacalone, Laufman, Carlin, McCord — there are more, and eventually we’ll learn their names. Some took unlawful action draped in the American flag and smarmy self-righteousness. Some were careerists craving a retirement paycheck and a strong resume, standing by and doing nothing — negligent or complicit with guilty knowledge

The group dubbed the “Secret Society” by FBI lawyer Lisa Page in a text to self-anointed FBI “Super Agent” Peter Strzok had a clear goal: Stop Trump. But how to do that “legally”? How does one manufacture a phony Russia hoax and hang it around Trump’s neck when you’re constrained from going after his campaign, organization and staff?

The FBI is specifically prohibited from penetrating and subverting U.S. organizations under the provisions of Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9: “No one acting on behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the intelligence community without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization, except in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and approved by the attorney general.” That’s tough for the “secret society.”

Could they — would they — rely on Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and have her office generate a legal finding memo? An actual, discoverable, legal record detailing and authorizing an operation against a presidential candidate? Too risky on a few levels.

But there’s more to Section 2.9: “Such participation shall be authorized only if it is essential to achieving lawful purposes as determined by the agency head or designee. No such participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the organization or its members except in cases where: (a) The participation is undertaken on behalf of the FBI in the course of a lawful investigation; or (b) The organization concerned is composed primarily of individuals who are not United States persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power.”

That second portion of Section 2.9 was exploited by Strzok & Co to create the predicate for a foreign counterintelligence investigation overseas that would then be “imported” back into the United States — circumventing the prohibition on “Undisclosed Participation in Organizations Within the United States.” Using this technique, Strzok & Co wouldn’t be offensively targeting the Trump operation to subvert his election and presidency. The FBI would now be “reacting” to a foreign intelligence threat.

Hence, we have the widely reported (FBI designed and orchestrated) events surrounding Carter Page, George Papadopolous, Stef Halper, Joseph Mifsud, Alexander Downer, et al. Super Agent Strzok even traveled to the United Kingdom (the safest “Outside the Continental United States” [OCONUS] operating environment for the FBI) to grease the skids for a counterintelligence “dangle” operation. The reader will recall Lisa Page’s December 2015 text message: “You get all our oconus lures approved? ,” to Strzok.

Having personally run double-agent operations as a counterintelligence case officer, I’m not guessing at this language and intelligence tradecraft.

Thrilled with the initiation of their foreign counterintelligence investigation implicating Trump “associates,” (and laundering the criminality of their end-run of “undisclosed participation”) the secret society could launch full-bore with an array of techniques and tradecraft. Keep in mind that the FBI/DOJ never gave Trump a “defensive security briefing” that is standard when FBI/DOJ comes upon a foreign counterintelligence threat to a U.S. organization or corporation. Never.

Not coincidentally, the “Trump Dossier” appears on the scene — thanks to Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee funding, via a couple of cut-outs, to actual Russians (a crime actually worth investigating). Next come the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, predicated on Hillary’s mercenary’s lies. Now we know the FBI went so far as to phony-up investigative reports (“302s”) in the related framing of LTG Mike Flynn. Is there anything the FBI/DOJ leadership wouldn’t do to stop Trump?

Here’s the big picture: there are the crimes described above — and there are the crimes to facilitate and then cover-up the underlying activity. That’s where the FBI got lost. It’s gone. No sensible American believes in the organization anymore. The DOJ is right there with them. Compromised, arrogant, ruthless, vindictive, detached, self-righteous, hypersensitive to criticism and largely immune. A fish rots from the head down. Go back and read the FBI/DOJ Litany of Shame. Review Comey’s arrogant, smug, Flynn-interview statement: “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”

The answer is to create an investigative division within the U.S. Marshals Service and laterally transfer over vetted, honest FBI agents. Collapse the decayed wreck of the FBI within six months and hope the American public can once again believe in “Equal Justice Under the Law.”

Chris Farrell is director of investigations and research for Judicial Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group. He previously worked as a counterintelligence case officer.